Chapter 17 An Eye for a Secret
An Eye for a Secret
Demelza would have leapt off the prince herself, and was actually on the verge of doing so, when her window started shrieking and the walls rattled as seething vines pushed into her bedroom.
“THERE SHALL BE NO CARNAL MISCHIEF DURING THE TOURNAMENT! I MEANT IT, BOY, I DO NOT CARE IF YOU’RE WRATE HIMSELF—”
“That was my fault!” said Demelza.
The vines paused.
“OH. WELL. NEVER MIND, THEN.”
Sulking, they spiraled back into the dark until all that was left was the faint muttering about “the moral corrosiveness in the heart of the youth” and such.
Demelza shook her head and then glanced at the ground, where Prince Arris remained sprawled.
He was still dressed in the coppery attire he had worn during the trial.
He groaned as he righted himself and Demelza was annoyed to notice that the candlelight illuminated shades of auburn in his chestnut hair.
And then Demelza was annoyed at being annoyed, because he’d spared her in the competition and made that grand speech while she’d skulked back to the shadows with the other bewildered—and pitying—contestants, because finding herself indebted to the prince was one thing, but finding herself attracted to him on top of it was pathetic.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“You were not present in the Ozorald Cave,” he said.
“I was … overcome,” said Demelza, hoping that sounded like something fine ladies said. Her sisters had told her that a lady being “overcome” was something of a conversation ender. But Arris was nonplussed.
“By what?”
Demelza sighed. “If this is about my report on the contestants, you shall have it by the week’s end, though I can say with reasonable certainty that I do not believe Talvi or Ursula are here to harm you.”
“Really?” asked Arris, brightening. “That’s good.”
“Yes,” said Demelza. “Again, a further report shall be—”
“You look like you’ve been crying,” said Arris. He still had not moved from the floor and was now regarding her curiously with his arms wrapped about his knees. “Why?”
Demelza slumped into the nearest chair. She didn’t have much talent for lying.
None of her sisters did. Perhaps it had something to do with their veritas lineage, for they could only evade the truth, but not deny it.
Demelza didn’t see the point in being coy.
Telling the truth wouldn’t make her seem any less competent than she did right now with tears crusting her face.
“I suppose you could say I’ve had an ill-timed personal crisis,” said Demelza.
“I’m only now realizing I’ve lived the entirety of my life in the service of someone else.
I have asked you for shelter and safety, but I do not know what I’ll do once I possess them.
I cannot hide from my father forever. And when someone asked me what I want, I had no answer.
Am I supposed to have an answer? I don’t think I’ve ever asked myself what I wanted.
I wanted to be useful to my father. I wanted to be needed.
Necessary. And now I find that I am, but for all the wrong reasons!
I’m not wanted for my intellect or whatnot.
I’m simply wanted for my heart. It feels … it’s horrible.”
Demelza finally drew a breath. “Does any of that even make sense?”
“Yes,” said Arris. “I understand that perfectly.”
The prince’s eyes possessed an unnerving intensity.
At first, Demelza felt as if the whole of her being was rifled through, but then his eyes softened, as if he was letting her peer inside him as well, and when Demelza looked at him, it was like stumbling upon a mirror.
Here they were. Two individuals whose purpose outweighed their personhood.
“How do you stand it?” she asked.
Arris laughed. “I suppose I don’t fight it, and that helps. I find a certain comfort in knowing that I’m not supposed to possess all the answers to the universe. It lets me approach each hour as a gift, which my sister tells me makes me exceptionally annoying company.”
“Are you the sort of annoying that waxes philosophical about the sunrise?” asked Demelza.
“No, but I once wept over what I considered to be my first and last experience of a perfect spring breeze,” said Arris.
Demelza didn’t want to laugh, but she did. Arris grinned. It made his ears stick out a bit more.
“For however long it lasts, it’s my life and I shall live it as I wish,” said Arris.
He leaned forward, and the sparkle vanished from his gaze.
“But I’ve had years to fight my way to that perspective, and there are many days where I cannot find my way back to that sense of peace.
As for what you said about not knowing what you want … I think that’s good.”
Demelza scowled. “How so?”
“Sometimes, the space to want is a worthy enough goal,” said Arris. “I don’t know what I want except to keep wanting, which is a choice that would be taken from me were I to turn into a tree.”
Arris stood, dusting off his copper-colored tunic and fussing with his hair. He looked a little rumpled, but no less handsome. He extended a hand to her.
“Help me find my future bride, Demelza, and I shall do my utmost to make sure that you too find the space to discover your wants.”
“Very well,” said Demelza, and they shook upon it once more.
Demelza sank back into the chair. She felt like an open wound.
It had been humiliating enough to announce to the royal family that she had no talent.
It had been even worse sulking back into the antechamber holding all the other contestants, who had at least managed to do something.
Edmea was at the front of the group, arms crossed and looking at Demelza as if she was something discovered upon the bottom of her shoes.
“I hadn’t even considered extreme patheticness as a strategy, but well played,” said Edmea.
It was a dismissal as much as it was a declaration:
Demelza was not one of them.
Demelza groaned. For the hundredth time that day, she longed for her sisters. They would know how to fix this.
“I need to gain the confidence of your contestants again,” said Demelza. “My performance for the talent portion was not well received.”
“You know that was a one-time exception, yes? If I pull that stunt again, they’ll think I’m smitten.”
“I know,” said Demelza. She stood up, pacing the room. She had thought the prince would be more anxious, but he was just curiously poking about the room. Arris went to the fireplace to inspect the assembled books.
“I wonder what books they supplied you—ugh! The Complete Works of Rodolfus Frey? The man is a fool. Who picked these?”
Demelza glanced at the mantel of the fireplace. It took her a moment to realize something was missing. And then she recalled the red eyeball. It was nowhere to be seen. Odd.
“What is your plan with the contestants, then?” asked Arris. He frowned. “What is it?”
“I could’ve sworn there was something else on that mantel … well, never mind … it was unsettling anyway,” she said. “I need to get close to the contestants.”
“Dressed like that, I don’t think they’ll let you anywhere near them, unfortunately,” said a new voice.
Against the wall, the tall dressing mirror began to tremble.
Demelza leapt back as shadows darted across the surface and Yvlle appeared in the reflection.
The princess wore black silk pajamas. Her hair, somewhat long in the front and cropped short everywhere else, was swept off her face.
For the first time, Demelza could see her scarlet eyes.
Again, Demelza was struck by the fact that Yvlle and Arris were twins.
Same handsome features, but a different hand—a crueler hand—had sketched the princess.
“It was your eye,” said Demelza, pointing at Yvlle. “On the mantelpiece!”
“Yes, yes, shock, disbelief, etcetera,” said Yvlle. “Now what’s this about a bargain between the two of you?”
Arris marched forward. “You were spying? Have we no right to privacy?”
“Of course not, brother, this is an absolute monarchy. You’re fortunate that it teeters on the side of the rational more often than not,” said Yvlle. “So. You are a veritas swan with a murderous father? Where are you from?”
Demelza thought about not answering, but didn’t see the point.
“The Silent Lakes,” she said.
“I thought no one lived there but the wizard Prava.”
“He is my father.”
Demelza glanced at Arris, whose shocked reaction looked a bit … delayed. He must have known. And yet he had kept her secret.
“Arris, how could you be so profoundly incurious about this girl whose services you’ve enlisted!” said Yvlle. “It is a wonder you’re still tethered to this life!”
Arris did not appear to be listening. He had taken Demelza’s seat by the fireplace and was now dragging his finger through the flames. The light caught on his fingertip and he began to swish shapes and sigils through the air.
“Fire calligraphy,” he said, when he caught Demelza looking.
“Excellent for the expression and articulation of love poems. The method was first created by Zaaru in the eleventh century. Apparently he had eaten coals, and then belched a sonnet so lyrical that the air held its shape simply to read it again.”
“You mean Zaaru claimed credit for the work of Zaavitra the Noseless in the ninth century,” said Demelza.
“Most scholars agree that she wrote about the method in a treatise on the peculiarities of zulfur and zalt. She could not smell such elements, and so she studied their other properties. It was how she alerted a merchant of his son-in-law’s plans to murder him for the deed to his cave. ”
Arris scowled. “I prefer believing in the calligraphy’s more romantic origins.”
In the mirror, Yvlle groaned. “Do you see why he is constantly on the verge of being murdered?” She eyed Demelza. “I did not know Prava had a daughter.”
“He has seven,” said Demelza. “I’m the youngest.”
“And the rest of your sisters?”
“Off conquering thrones and bringing the spoils of other kingdoms’ magics to my father,” she said. “He was looking for the final piece of a puzzle to the secret of everlasting life, and he found it. In me.”
Yvlle frowned. She looked between Demelza and Arris. “I am sorry to hear that,” she said, and Demelza heard genuine sorrow in her voice.
Too late, it occurred to Demelza that her father might not be the only one interested in everlasting life.
That someone far worse and far crueler could find just as much reason to carve out her heart.
But Yvlle did not make Demelza nervous. If anything, she reminded Demelza of her sister Eustacia, who had dyed her golden hair red from the blood of a vizier she had slain on the occasion of her nineteenth birthday. Bloodthirsty, yes, but still … loving.
“If you’re to suss out which of the contestants have murderous motives, then you must understand that they will not speak to you unless they think there’s something you can give them in return, such as proving yourself to be a useful ally when they take the throne,” said Yvlle.
“I could help you, Arris. You are my favorite brother, after all.”
“I’m your only brother.”
Yvlle shrugged. “Fine. Why not. I’m in between experiments anyway. Now … what to do … what to do…” Yvlle peered about as if she could see past the mirror’s edges and into every corner of Demelza’s chamber.
“Did you bring any other clothes?”
“There was no time. Will this not serve?” asked Demelza. “The cloth is enchanted to clean itself.”
“And the mud?”
“Enchanted,” said Demelza. “My mother’s idea of camouflage … it has begun to fall off, but it will take some time. What else can we do? What do you think they might be drawn to?”
“Power,” said Yvlle. “Which you have but cannot reveal.”
“I disagree, Sister,” said Arris. “It is not power that draws the eye. It is mystery. A dazzling king can be poor fodder for the imagination. But a pauper with a tale? Now, that can dazzle a crowd.”
Yvlle made a hmm sound.
“The next trial is in one week’s time, and by then, Mother will want the contestants narrowed down even more,” said Yvlle.
“There shall be teas and whatnot—nothing planned in the evening, for you know how she is about a grand ball. Tomorrow I believe there shall be a tour of the palace menagerie. I know how mother feels about the place, but I can’t imagine why she’d want anyone there. ”
“How one treats an animal says more about the person than the beast,” said Demelza.
Both Arris and Yvlle eyed her, as if slightly perplexed.
“Fair point, Demelza,” said Arris. “Then I suppose it’s settled. Naturally, Demelza’s secret stays between us, Sister.”
Yvlle scowled. “Obviously. I have no desire to see what madness would be unleashed on the palace if they knew what she really was.”
A slight thrill raced through Demelza’s body.
She had always longed to go on missions like her sisters, and although these were dramatically different circumstances, there was still intrigue.
Glamour, even. Demelza felt positively giddy about it, which made her wonder if she’d bumped her head in her rush to get to Rathe Castle.
Demelza had never been singled out for this sort of attention.
Never been fussed over like this either.
Never had a chance to prove what she could do—only show that she could do enough. It was … exciting.
“I will fetch you in the morning,” said Yvlle. “If there’s nothing to be done about the hair then at the very least we’ll begin with a new wardrobe and figure out what tale to tell of you. Brother, get out of her room. I can hear the vines mumbling from my quarters in the Castle.”
Arris shook his head, smiling. “Good night, Demelza.”
“Good night, Your Majesty,” said Demelza.
He paused. “I think we’re beyond that, don’t you? Call me Arris.”
Arris, thought Demelza. The door closed. Demelza glanced at the mirror, but Yvlle lingered.
“My brother is a strange one, but he deserves a chance, you know,” she said.
“To what?”
Yvlle smiled. “To live.”